one of the things we talked about at the time was truman and mcarthur's mistake that when in the flush of tactical gain during korea in 1950, they went beyond their mandate and they decided to liberate the peninsula by force. that brought china into the war, as you know, it cost another 20,000 american deaths. and we were very conscious, the president was very conscious about sometimes what you don't do is be every bit as wise and kaungs conventional as what you do do. >> one other thought, richard, which is on the domestic front, the extraordinary thing he did again there, it seems to me, was he compromised in terms of what he wanted to do, recognizing the budget deficits run up by his predecessor, ronald reagor, and he approved a tax increase. he knew this would drive the right wing of the republican party crazy. it did. newt gingrich launched a savage attack on him, and it may have done something with the re-election, losing support on the right.